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starcurtain · 5 months ago

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Comparing Phaidei and Other Hoyo MLM Ships (Part 2)

<- Part 1 is back that way.

In the first part of this, I laid out some of the ways Phaidei fits within Hoyo's normal pattern for queer-coded MLM ships: They're equals but opposites, perfectly matched; they've ostensibly got a "rivalry" as a cover for their laser focus on each other; their models are deliberately placed closer together in cutscenes than other characters' are, and they're intentionally paralleled to a heterosexual married couple. All of these are traits that other Hoyo MLM pairs also show, a sort of foundational standard for Hoyo's queer-coded MLM ships.

But then Phaidei just took a huge side-step around all of them, and started doing things that Hoyo hasn't done in any of their other recent games. (Tiny aside here: HI3 does wildly different things with its characters; I think that being first published when Hoyo was a more obscure company allowed them to get away with things--like the Bronya/Seele kiss and Welt and Co.'s cross-dressing, for example--that "modern" Hoyo games cannot get away with due to greater levels of public scrutiny.)

I said it in the other post, but it bears repeating:

You really aren't imagining things--Phaidei is actually different.

So I wanted to take a closer look at what was making it feel so unique, by comparing its differences to other popular Hoyo MLM ships.

Here we go:

1. The Feeling's Mutual

There was no heterosexual explanation for this framing.

In Part 1 of this post, I noted that Hoyo has a typical personality pattern they follow when queer-coding their male characters, particularly in using "difficult" personalities to create an artificial sense of distance between the characters. If one character is angry all the time, or tsundere, or using sarcasm to cover for their fear of getting close to others, Hoyo can mobilize that personality gap as a shield to give anti-LGBT+ players plausible deniability. Hell, there are people still out there genuinely convinced that Alhaitham and Kaveh have a toxic relationship. There are people out there saying Ratio despises Aventurine because he was mean to him one (1) time while undercover. That's how effective injecting a little bit of bickering into a queer-coded relationship is.

Hoyoverse is very, very familiar with creating this delicate balance of teasing the ship while feeding anti-LGBT+ players and censors just enough "Look, they don't like each other; they're arguing!" contrary material to avoid setting anyone off.

Which... makes it absolutely bizarre that they made almost no effort to do this with Phainon and Mydei.

Sure, on paper we're told that Phainon and Mydei are rivals. Phainon describes it as "He's both my friend and my foe." And yes, they have their quips (Phainon's "It's exhausting talking to you sometimes" comes to mind).

But animosity--the genuine desire to one-up each other--is completely missing from Mydei and Phainon's "rivalry." They aren't Sasuke and Naruto. They aren't Izuku and Bakugou. They don't actually even want to beat each other--they want to be equals. If you defeat Mydei in the 3.0 competition, Phainon immediately folds and calls the contest off. If you let Mydei win, Mydei immediately folds and declares no contest.

Although Aglaea notes they compete because they're "impulsive youths," what she was actually missing is that Mydei only let himself be goaded into Phainon's hot bath competition because he was worried about Phainon and wanted to take Phainon's mind off the failed trial. Then, immediately after beating Phainon in the hot bath challenge, he lets Phainon win the "take more people home" challenge, to tie up their score again.

In fact, Mydei and Phainon's relationship is so devoid of the actual back-and-forth typical of other Hoyoverse MLM ships that at one point, Phainon even asks for it:

(Though he's equally quick to demand compliments from Mydei too.)

Instead, virtually every line from Phainon and Mydei through both 3.0 and 3.1 reiterates that they care deeply about each other, and are concerned for not only each other's physical well-being but also each other's mental and emotional health. They freely and consistently support each other both on the battlefield and off, confessing their struggles and relying on each other for advice. Whenever they're separated, the game intentionally hammers home how worried they are without the other around.

Over and over and over again, the devs tell you how well Mydei and Phainon know each other and how much effort they're putting in to take care of each other:

The game doesn't let us forget that they are one another's "closest person," and that the respect they have for each other is mutual. Although I wouldn't go so far as to speculate they actually recognize romantic feelings, canon makes it clear that they are aware their emotional connection goes both ways. They don't just value each other's battle prowess, intelligence, or usefulness--they value each other's feelings explicitly, every single time emotions are expressed between them in the game's text.

In fact, Mydei even scolds Phainon for approaching their goodbye with a straight face; he knows that Phainon is hurt by their parting, and he wants Phainon to be honest, as Mydei is being honest in turn:

The rainbows in the background really sold the scene, ngl.

This isn't Renheng, where resentment has taken away any glimmer of joy. This isn't Ratiorine, where even if Aventurine were in a more stable mindset, Ratio's inability to spit out his feelings might keep them from going anywhere. Even with Haikaveh, the Hoyo ship known for Alhaitham's devotion, Kaveh's own struggles and refusal to accept Alhaitham's kindness are an active plot point keeping them from progressing. Maybe you could draw a parallel between Phaidei and Cyno/Tighnari for levels of "mutual," but even then, Cynari interactions are often left off-screen or in the background, for the players to fill in the blanks. On the contrary, Phainon and Mydei's fondness for each other is constantly in our faces.

The devs wanted players to know Phainon and Mydei are invested. We're supposed to see how much they want to be near each other.

More than that, we're supposed to understand just how deeply they trust each other.

Okay, okay, yes, I know this is massive foreshadowing to the inevitable betrayal and tragedy impending (come on, Amphoreus wouldn't qualify as an ancient Greek drama without it!), but I think that a lot of people are missing the key here: By this point in the story, Mydei already knows how he's going to die. He knows someone is going to stab him in the back and finally end his immortal life. When he entrusts Phainon with this secret, he's not trusting Phainon to keep him safe. He's trusting Phainon to do the opposite.

He's telling Phainon: "I want it to be you."

If the prophecy can't be changed and fate is set in stone, then Mydei wants Phainon to be with him in his final moments, to be the one to finally set him free from the "curse" he perceives his own immortality to be. Of course it would be Hoyo who makes "I want to die by your hands" into a declaration of ultimate trust, but it is an explicit statement of trust, in a way that very few--if any--other modern Hoyoverse MLM ships get to show each other on screen.

Phew, that was a lot!

But I think this is one of the clearest and most defining differences between Phainon and Mydei and other Hoyo MLM ships--the devs took away players' ability to claim they don't get along. You might still be able to call them "just friends" or "brothers in arms," but unlike Alhaitham and Kaveh who fight, Ratiorine who scheme, or Renheng who are actual enemies, Mydei and Phainon explicitly like each other. They trust each other. They seek one another out.

It might seem like a small thing on paper, but this is actually a big thing in practice. Hoyo is pushing the boundary here, reducing the avenues for deniability. It is harder for anti-LGBT+ fans to claim that Phainon and Mydei don't have obvious in-game ship-tease than for virtually any other modern Hoyoverse MLM ship. (By the way, this is why people have resorted to calling Phaidei "industry plant yaoi;" because they can't deny the queer-coding is actually there this time, they instead have to try to de-legitimize the ship in other ways, such as dismissing it as nothing more than bait.)

This also means Hoyo has less of an "out" if people start to really question. It would be harder to explain away Phainon and Mydei's relationship than it would be to explain away even Alhaitham and Kaveh's. Alhaitham and Kaveh have "They're always arguing" and "Their friendship was ruined by their fight" or "They're just roommates," etc. to lean back on. Phainon and Mydei... are really bad at even pretending to be rivals...

All of this to say: Hoyo made a bold and deliberate choice allowing two of their mainstream male characters to be so emotionally close and attentive to each other on screen. They went outside their own current comfort zone for this one, guys.

2. We're Conspicuously Missing a Twink

Moving on from Phaidei's emotional differences, I wanted to talk specifically about Hoyoverse's perspectives on gay men, and how easy it is for companies to slip into not only stereotypes for gay characters, but also extremely heteronormative portrayals of gay relationships. As sad as it is, it is easier to market queer-coded male characters to yaoi fans (who are often--although obviously not always--heterosexual women) if they fit into the expected pattern for heterosexual relationships: a highly masculine man to "wear the pants" in the relationship, paired with a delicate, effeminate man to obviously be the bottom.

Now, don't get me wrong: Gay relationships come in all varieties; people have different preferences, and categorical groups like "twinks" and "bears" exist so people who have those preferences can find each other. Obviously plenty of hyper-masculine (and just masculine-leaning) gay men do want more effeminate partners. Plenty of real guys consider themselves twinks and have great relationships with men ranging all the way up the most masculine dudes you've ever seen. But "masculine man with feminine man" isn't the only kind of gay relationship around, despite the fact that that's what Hoyo's yaoi shiptease might lead you to believe.

(Edit: I can't believe I have to say this, but it seems some portion the HSR fandom cannot read, so apparently I do: Stop using my post in your hunk/twink or hunk/hunk discourse; if you didn't bother to read the paragraph above this in which I word-for-word point out that real gay relationships come in all varieties, including lots of relationships between masculine men and more effeminate men, then that is on you--this post isn't about how "hunk/hunk" is more "real gay" material or "hurr durr twinks bad;" it's about how Hoyo has served up a hunk/twink ship 20 times in a row, with their constant modus operandi being yaoi genre staple tropes in which one character is essentially designated as the bottom and the other as the top specifically using masculine versus feminine coding, because that is what sells to the yaoi fan demographic they are targeting, particularly to heterosexual female yaoi fans, who are predisposed toward heteronormative relationship patterns even in the gay media they consume. The only situation in which hunk/hunk is "more progressive" than hunk/twink is for Hoyo, who clearly have hunk/twink as their comfort zone and only very, very rarely step out of that established pattern. This entire post is about Hoyo's patterns for creating their mlm ships, not about gay rights activism--read the essay in the context of Hoyo's design philosophy or just stop reading here, please.)

I don't want to say that Hoyo's track record on this front is bad, because honestly it's not. Their male characters often have surprisingly complex expressions of gender identity, with interesting blends of masculine and feminine traits. But... Hoyo does have a pattern. Plenty of their queer-coded MLM ships fall into this same general (and kind of stereotypical) profile: Alhaitham is inexplicably ripped and represents calm rationality, while Kaveh is "the spitting image of his mother," has to wring out his wrists when he uses his own weapon, and represents passion and romanticism. Ayato is the head of his clan; Thoma holds housekeeping classes for Inazuma's other housewives. Xingqiu is the "refined" rich boy in ruffles; Chongyun is the down-to-earth working lad. Wriothesley is the most masculine man in Genshin Impact; Neuvillette mothers the entire race of Melusines. Over in Star Rail, Aventurine covets pink diamonds, bathes himself in sparkling perfume, and is so tiny Ratio's hands can encircle his waist. (I don't actually think Aventurine is as feminine as some other people read him, but trying to pretend that he isn't designed to evoke queer tropes is just silly.) Moze is as ripped as Alhaitham, while the game itself mocks Jiaoqiu for being a pink-haired male character. I'm going to talk more about Renheng in a sec, but Renheng is also this way, with the more "delicate"-looking Imbibitor Lunae to Yingxing/Blade's solid frame.

Mydei and Phainon don't fit this pattern at all. Both of them are as tall as Star Rail models come, and while Mydei's build has an impressive degree of bulk, Phainon is no slouch either:

Neither one of them is visually effeminate in any manner, and they're also not stereotypically effeminate in their roles in the story. Neither of them is a housekeeper or a home-maker; (again, poor Aventurine catching strays, but:) neither of them is in the business of blinding people into deals with their good-looks or careful facade of helplessness.

Theoretically we could say the devs tried to squish Mydei into a more heteronormative role by giving him traits traditionally perceived as "feminine": he cooks, he plays house with children, he puts milk in his juice and turns it pink, he's paralleled almost exclusively to his own mother... But his role in the plot is such a quintessentially masculine story (son of a self-fulfilling prophecy, father-killer, god-slaying warrior, king to his people, aura-farming champion of the Amphoreus battle cutscenes, etc.) that clearly we are not meant to perceive him as a solely effeminate figure. The whole "malewife Mydei" thing comes across as so comedic because the game itself continually insists on asserting his masculinity.

Conversely, Phainon, despite being the "gentler" of the two characters, the one who is described as having a soft heart and being outgoing and kind, is even less suited to being called feminine. His "Messiah"-esque role in the story, literally being the "prodigal son" of Amphoreus, paints him as the very picture of a classical male hero. Even more so than Mydei, he is a private and closed off person who hides his heart--and his own identity--from those around him, traits more often stereotypically associated with emotionally-closed-off men than female characters.

Up to this point, Hoyoverse had a relatively stable pattern in the MLM ships they baited in their recent games. They primarily played it safe, sticking to queer-coding relationships that both visually and narratively reflect heteronormative relationships.

But Phaidei once again broke the mold.

This time, Hoyo chose to queer-code not the more delicate-looking man (although I guess there's still plenty of time for Anaxa, I shouldn't sell him shorter than he already is lol), but two overtly masculine male characters, who can't be readily projected on to a stereotypical heterosexual relationship by a heterosexual audience. This was a big departure from Hoyo's norm, and I think this actually deserves a lot more respect than people are giving it. Hoyo didn't have to pick their two muscle-bound warrior male leads and make them close and caring. They didn't have to expose themselves to the obvious question: "Why are two 'manly' characters being so soft on each other?" It is harder to pass off Phainon and Mydei's queer-coding as accidental, or suggest the fans are just reading too much into it, when nothing about them can be mistaken for a "traditional" heteronormative relationship that heterosexual yaoi fans are familiar with. For a game produced in China, where standards for depicting men and masculinity in media are so high, making the choice to bait two masculine men together (let alone this expansion's "hero," who is an expy of a beloved former character), was a very bold and risky choice on Hoyo's part.

Companies don't make bold and risky choices on accident.

Finally, I wanted to make one more point about why I appreciate Phaidei's emotionally attentive depiction--it's because there's a whole other realm they could have taken the "could end up a villain" queer-coded main character. As I mentioned in the first part of this post, queer-coding villains is a trope as old as dirt. When you queer-code a male villain particularly, you add an extra layer to the danger: Now the male villain is not just a physical threat, but a sexual one. Adding queer-coding to the male villain has often, in past media, been used to conflate homosexuality with deviance or perversion and suggests sexual violence even if nothing ever truly occurs.

Maybe the real Hoyoverse queer-coding was the red flower petals we threw along the way.

I said I was going to bring up Renheng, and here it is: Unfortunately, Blade and Dan Heng fall into this latter pattern a bit. Although he has his reasons, the game's portrayal of Blade's "pursuit," especially in the early portion of their story, casts Dan Heng into the role of the victim, a young man being hounded by a crazed stalker who refuses to let him go. Their cutscenes, including Dan Heng's nightmares, paint Blade as an overwhelming presence who invades both Dan Heng's physical space but also his mental space, making it impossible for Dan Heng to escape his clutches. This "We must pay the price together" absolutely reads, out of content anyway, as some sort of yandere death pact. Their lightcone is literally called "Nowhere to Run."

Even though Blade is not deliberately engaging in any form of sexual behavior, his obsession with Dan Heng in their early scenes can give players the impression of a cliched "depraved homosexual," and the implication that sexual violence could occur is present through their early interactions. This isn't on accident; Hoyo was playing with the yandere trope on purpose! I'm not going to lie, part of Renheng's early appeal for many players was how scary and dominating Blade came across as. The subtle sexual implications of pursuit are the point, and if you think Hoyo wasn't capitalizing on the intersection of "sexy" and "dangerous" with Renheng's early interactions, then you're probably a little too pure for this world.

As things progress, of course, we see this dynamic between Renheng dissipate, shifting his narrative from "crazed pursuer for unknown reasons" to "potentially the victim" of their past scenario, an effect which they achieved through the slow drip feed of Yingxing and Dan Feng's backstories. This, I think, speaks to not only a shift in the devs' intentions for Blade and Dan Heng's relationship (there's more to be said here about the Yingxing-Baiheng-Dan Feng mess that is the cut lore, etc.), but also to a shift in the way the devs wanted Blade to be perceived by fans, from a potentially predatory figure to a much less toxic potential love interest.

Anyway, back to Phaidei: We know that Phainon is headed for a downfall. It's been so obviously foreshadowed at this point that there's really nothing much more to say than that--however, even though he may also have a brush with villainy, like Blade, and even though we know Flame Reaver's very likely going to kill Mydei... I don't think that the devs will use Phainon's queer-coding as part of his villainous/Lord Ravager identity. I don't get any sense that the dev team has any intentions of conflating Phainon's potential homosexuality with depravity, or using it as a motive for his descent into destruction (he might be gay and potentially end up on Nanook's side, but he won't be a villain because he is gay). I definitely don't think we will see the kind of sexually-threatening physicality between Flame Reaver and Mydei that the devs did earlier with Blade and Dan Heng, even if "stabbing someone from behind" does have an inherent sort of sexual symbolism.

I appreciate that even in a story headed for the obvious "stabbed in the back by the villain form of the man I loved," the devs seem like they have moved on from falling into the pitfall (accidentally or intentionally, to sell yandere tropes) of portraying of gay men as predatory.

3. Leave Room for the Trailblazer

In part 1 of this post, I mentioned that Hoyo uses the placements of characters in scenes to indicate closeness, and I already pointed out that Mydei and Phainon stand really... really... close together, much closer than they stand to other characters.

However, it's not just that their models are literally positioned closer together in cutscenes--it's that their body language explicitly closes other characters out. Plenty of Hoyoverse MLM ships are ship-baited by moving the models of the male characters closer together, but very, very few of them are positioned to so consistently exclude even the player.

For comparison, consider the well-known scene where Alhaitham brings the Traveler and Paimon to his and Kaveh's house, which was framed with both domesticity and intimacy:

Although Alhaitham and Kaveh are also prone to the "stand shoulder-to-shoulder" thing that Hoyo does when they want to imply closeness between characters, the framing of their scenes nevertheless leave enough space for the Traveler and Paimon to be active participants in the conversation, enough space between Alhaitham and Kaveh for Traveler to not look blocked out.

For example, despite standing next to each other in that moment above, the camera deliberately cuts Alhaitham out, so that only Kaveh and the Traveler duo occupy the shot. Later on, Alhaitham bridges the divide between the Traveler and Kaveh, turning away from Kaveh toward the Traveler--once again, the conversation and scene are open to the Traveler, and thus, to the player.

Here's a live demonstration of my earlier point: Alhaitham and Kaveh stand closer together than the player and Candace, indicating their closer connection.

Other scenes play out similarly--although Alhaitham and Kaveh are close, their body language doesn't actively exclude other characters or the player from feeling like part of their conversations.

Over in Star Rail, we see the same general situation. We know that Aventurine rarely stands close to other characters, with Ratio being the one relatively consistent exception, but even so, the camera will usually give them some breathing room, making it feel like there's enough space for the player on the other side of the screen to be part of the moment:

Meanwhile Blade excludes both Dan Heng and the player, putting us on equal footing to Dan Heng and giving the impression that the player and Dan Heng are standing against Blade together. There is still room for "us" in this scene.

However, once again, Phaidei proves the exception. Mydei and Phainon don't just stand close--they don't even want to share air with anyone but each other.

A very normal way to have a group conversation. Definitely.

Consistently when standing side-by-side, they turn inward to face each other, rather than facing other characters in the conversation, literally forming a closed unit despite the fact that they're supposed to be in a group scene:

The thirdest third wheel to ever third wheel.

If it wasn't enough for the devs to just imply that the Trailblazer isn't able to break through Mydei and Phainon's circle, they decided to call it out in the text itself, echoing the player's own thoughts: "What about me?"

As I mentioned in the first part of the post, the devs also consistently use specific camera angles to capture both Mydei and Phainon in the frame together, at the same time, further emphasizing the closed nature of their conversations.

You will never see so many over-the-shoulder shots again in your life. You are the outsider looking in on their private moments!

Perhaps most telling about the devs' intention to create an intimate air for Phainon and Mydei's conversations is that literally everyone else disappears when they speak to each other. For example, Phainon and Mydei's first goodbye takes place in the Garden of Life, which is actually a pretty bustling plaza with numerous NPCs. But every single NPC was deliberately removed by the dev team for Mydei and Phainon's scene there, to allow them a private moment:

Even in their final farewell, where Mydei was seen off by a literal bustling crowd of NPCs, not a single person is visible during their goodbyes--until the exact moment Mydei reminds Phainon that the whole rest of the world is waiting for him. The whole rest of the world didn't even exist for Phainon until Mydei forced him to remember.

It's not just the Trailblazer (and us, the player) who is third wheeling Mydei and Phainon's relationship. They literally exist in a world of their own when they speak to each other. No other modern Hoyoverse ship is on this level of excluding even the player--excluding even the damn NPCs!--to make a point about their closeness.

I thought I was going crazy the first time I was watching these scenes, thinking "It can't be that the devs actually went that far in framing Mydei and Phainon as a pair." But they did. They actually did.

The envelope has been pushed off a mountain, my guys.

But that still wasn't enough for the devs. They needed to go further.

4. Deploy Shoujo Manga Trope #57

I know I just said that Phainon and Mydei's relationship doesn't map well a typical heteronormative male/female relationship, but that doesn't mean the devs gave up on any and all attempts to apply typical romantic cliches to Phaidei. On the contrary, the dev team's thought process seems to have been "Hey, we're doubling-down on our queer-coding for Phainon and Mydei. How can we make it really, really, really obvious they're a ship?" And then they literally spun a roulette wheel of romantic tropes and threw every single one of them at patch 3.1 at the same time.

We have the "romantic lead beautifully framed by red rose petals blood glitter":

The "You used my love to manipulate me" subplot:

Phainon begs for compliments, and Mydei's reaction is to look away demurely and call him a scoundrel?? Am I seeing things?!

This is where he'd be blushing like a tomato if he was a female character.

The "please look after my dear husband when I'm gone" tragedy trope:

THE RING???

"LET'S MEET AGAIN IN THE NEXT LIFE"?!!

What do I even say about all... this...? Do I even need to say anything at all? Has any MLM ship in a recent Hoyoverse game gotten remotely as many romance flags? Alhaitham, where is Kaveh's ring?!

What I actually want to say isn't a specific breakdown of any of these moments, but what they mean in totality. Remember that Hoyo made every one of these choices with deliberate intent. They knew what the picture would add up to. These are explicitly romantic tropes that are extremely difficult to interpret in other lights.

You are supposed to read "If there's a chance in the next life" as "I want to be reincarnated with you; I want to meet you again; I want to be with you in a softer world."

You're supposed to think of the ring as a wedding ring. For one, Gorgo would only have gotten it through her marriage to Eurypon, but even more so--there was no reason this item needed to be a ring in the first place except to evoke images of wedding rings. We already knew from 3.0 that Castrum Kremnos used crests and seals for identification. Why make it a ring and not just the crest of Castrum Kremnos? Furthermore, why involve Phainon at all? The audience would never have known any different if Chartonus just said "Found this I did, have it you should, Mydei." It's a ring and it's a ring deliberately from Phainon because the devs want you to see it as a wedding ring.

What an incredibly bold move on Hoyo's part, and I don't even really mean just in the context of being a Chinese company, but even in the context of being a global company. Hoyo lives and dies by the revenue of their character banners, and choosing to explicitly and (nearly) exclusively apply romantic tropes to their male lead and deuteragonist in a brand-new patch cycle was a legitimately daring choice. Their deliberate application of romantic staples to an MLM ship, in a way that is difficult even for anti-LGBT+ fans to write off, was a very, very calculated decision. I genuinely hope it pays off for them. I hope Mydei and Phainon's banners both sell well, so the devs' receive a clear message in turn that fans appreciated their boldness and their commitment to creating queer content for these two characters.

I'm just going to end on one final note, about a scene that you may have noticed I conveniently skipped. Yes, the most conspicuous scene of them all:

5. A+ Censor Dodging

By some miracle of obliviousness, some Olympic-level mental gymnastics, or by sheer force of will, I think some people might still have made it to this point thinking that Phaidei was not being deliberately baited by the devs. You could maybe, somehow, convince yourself that the blood glitter rose petals and the shoulder-to-shoulder emotional conversations were just coincidences, that the tsundere "I'm not worried about him" was just dudes being tough guys, that the Trailblazer was a third wheel because Phainon and Mydei are "just good friends."

But then devs said "No, we need to be unmistakable. We need to make ourselves 1000% clear. We are baiting the yaoi fangirls, guys; please stop ignoring our hard work."

If going further than they've ever gone with Mydei and Phainon's body language wasn't enough, if Phainon's being willing to kill a god to save his man wasn't enough, if implying a wedding ring wasn't enough, what else could the devs possibly do to remove all plausible deniability and make it undeniably clear that Mydei and Phainon are queer characters (even if it is only for the benefit of yaoi fangirls)?

They can do something they've never done in their recent games before: Imply actual sex between male characters.

(Side note, Hoyo lesbians have had this implied sexual content pass from the beginning. You will always be famous, Beiguang. It's only the male characters that can't even have implied sex. 😂)

Obviously Phainon and Mydei are not having sex in the game. The dialogue even goes out of its way afterward to remind us that they remained fully clothed in that bath, thank you. But the refusal to show what was actually happening--censorship used as a tool to imply--the cut to the black screen, the narration of one animal pursuing another, the discretionary water droplets between the moaning... (And another little edit because @mynabirb made such a good point in the tags: The fact that they chose to "censor" this with a butterfly, the literal symbol of romance in Amphoreus, is almost too much. The devs really did say "Time to silence all doubts.")

From the player's perspective--and examining this as a choice on the dev team's part--there is no way to read this scene other than "sexually suggestive." You're supposed to think "This sounds incredibly sus." Because it is sus. Because the devs added this scene knowing that it would intentionally make people think about the idea of Phainon and Mydei having sex.

Sure, this scene is really funny in context. You're supposed to come out of it laughing, going "Wow, they're idiots." But you will also, whether you like it or not, come out of this thinking "Damn, Hoyo really went all in on the yaoi bait, didn't they?"

You can't "Devs didn't mean it" out of this one.

Which is brave as hell on Hoyo's part, to be honest! Even if this is nothing but queer-baiting, they saw that sick yaoi fan money and decided to go all in on it.

Say it with me: A dev team from a country with notoriously strict rules against depictions of homosexuality in media, from a company with a huge global fanbase including many conservative and religious countries, and with a majority male target audience, went out of their way to undeniably include sexually suggestive gay content in their game.

Whatever their motivation--be it simply money or from a genuine desire to tell gay stories--this wasn't a casual decision. This took commitment. This decision almost certainly went all the way to the top brass of the team for clearance. Someone probably had to fight to get this added.

But they did it, and not with Kaveh and Alhaitham (the previously undisputed kings of current Hoyoverse queer-coding) but with two brand-new (to Star Rail at least) characters who have extremely important roles in the game's on-going narrative--major characters who can't be overlooked.

Phaidei is literally built different.

But I'm still left with one lingering question:

Is Hoyo queer-coding or just queer-baiting?

Even though I played 3.1 in a sort of stupefied haze because I actually couldn't believe what I was seeing in Phainon and Mydei's scenes, I also ended it with a pretty bittersweet feeling.

How amazing that Hoyo pushed the envelope so far with Phaidei... But at what cost?

Did Mydei really have to leave Okhema never to return? Or is he being banished from the plot because his relationship with Phainon was too intense?

Isn't this just the "bury your gays" trope, in essence?

Lore-wise, there isn't any reason Mydei actually has to leave Okhema forever. Sure, he presumably is going to fight the Black Tide where it manifests across Amphoreus, but what about that requires him to "never return"? Demigods aren't geographically bound to the locations their Titans blessed, or Aglaea and Anaxa wouldn't be able to leave the Grove. There shouldn't be any reason Mydei can't visit Okhema when he wants.

The more you think about it, the worse it looks that the dev team implied Phaidei harder than they've ever implied an MLM ship before, only to immediately turn around and go "And then Mydei left forever." As if the only way it's okay to make characters that gay is if you then get rid of at least one of them. (Speaking humorously, at the rate Phainon and Mydei were going, if the devs didn't get rid of Mydei, he and Phainon probably would have been making out on-screen by 3.2, but you know what I mean.)

Sure Phaidei can be the MLM Star Rail ship with the most support in canon--but only at the cost of never being seen together again, apparently.

I'm not sure I like this trade off.

However, I am telling myself to remain cautiously optimistic. We know that Mydei's role in the story is not done, and that he and Phainon are destined for at least one more reunion, even if it won't be a happy one. We've been told that Amphoreus's story will be "heart-warming." I choose to believe that the devs will try to scrabble some sort of positive ending out of all this. At the very least, perhaps we'll end with a "in another life montage," and get to see Phainon and Mydei finally meeting in that library.

So is Hoyo queer-coding from a genuine desire to include gay characters or just baiting hard to sell Mydei to fangirls?

I'd say let's wait and see. Amphoreus has barely started cooking.

In the meantime, I think it is worth examining (and appreciating) Hoyo's willingness to mix up their own patterns, break their own trends, and to try something truly new and different with Phaidei. Even if this is all the content we ever get, Hoyoverse did things they haven't done before in any of their recent games, and showed that they're willing to push the limits for queer content in order to tell the stories they really want to tell.

I am a served fan, Hoyo. Well played, well played.

#honkai star rail #phaidei #mydei #phainon #hoyoverse #queer-coding #oh my god it's finally done #this got away from me so much #I really said “Someone's gonna have to write the essay”#and then that someone ended up being me #there are some other ships mentioned here #haikaveh #renheng #ratiorine #only mentions though #sorry #now... I can sleep...

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gingybimby · 3 months ago

Text

Collateral Damage of Dragons

Synopsis: Sylus is still a dragon, but keeps tight control on his form. It's only when you lose all inhibitions while ovulating that he matches your energy.

Notes/Warnings: explicit shameless nsfw (MDNI), sylus x afab!reader, no use of Y/N, they're feral and break things, breeding, established relationship, you know he's not human but not much else, explicit consent and safe word established, predator/prey tones

This took too long to write. Barely proofread. Might cross-post to AO3 later. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SYLUS- I've been saving for the birthday memory.

wc: 3.1k

Tag List: @browneyedgirl22 @cherryredstarz

You were possessed. At least, that’s what it felt like rushing into the N109 Zone on your bike, the heavy vibrations making the ache between your legs unbearable. You’d only gotten off work just before racing over into lawless land because you couldn’t bother to wait. It was bad enough Xavier had been hovering, like he could tell your panties were soaked even after spending forty-five minutes wrapping up some paperwork from some wanderer encounters. You adored your sleepy coworker, but there was only one man on your mind all day making you ache.

Driving right into the underground garage where Sylus liked to keep all his various motorcycles was second nature to you these days ever since you and Sylus became rather serious about your relationship. You still liked to dance around each other in your methods of sharing indirect affection, but the dance held an electric zeal to it now. It was a good thing you both liked a little danger.

When you slipped into the base, you were on a hunt. Luckily, the twins seemed to be absent. It saved everyone from some awkwardness and trouble. Your boyfriend was proving to be rather elusive. He wasn’t in the boxing ring, his favorite music room, his bedroom, or the main armory. You made it back to the large common room that had an open kitchen and island with a quiet huff when finally a presence appeared at your back.

Your neck was brushed with a strong nose and curious lips that sent fire right to your aching pussy. Large, strong hands settled on your hips as the deep voice of Sylus practically purred into your ear after tugging your earlobe between his teeth momentarily.

“Looks like a little kitten brought herself to me in heat.”

You spun on Sylus, pointing an accusatory finger in his face until he tried to bite it. Your glare was fueled with playful annoyance.

“You-! You know exactly what time of the month it is and you were deliberately hiding from me.” You accused even as your boyfriend dragged you closer to press your bodies together.

“Hm.. guilty as charged. Fuck I could smell you the moment you walked in, kitten.” Sylus buried his face in your neck once more to breathe in deeply like he needed your scent to survive. A soft growl reverberated in his throat.

You couldn’t stop the shiver that licked up your spine, leaning your head to the side for him. It was the faintest whimper from your lips that had him lightly biting into your neck, his grip tightening for a fraction of a second before relaxing in what you knew to be an exercise of restraint. That simply wouldn’t do.

Ever since you learned Sylus wasn’t exactly… human, you’ve been wanting to see more of that wild part of him that he always kept careful control over. You learned quickly that your scent drives him crazy, so you intentionally didn’t put any artificial smells on your skin today.

Oh you knew exactly what you were doing. You intentionally denied yourself the littlest pleasure as the peak of your ovulation hit just so you could truly let loose with Sylus. You even already put in for tomorrow off. It was all for this. You wondered if he suspected anything.

Planting a firm hand on his chest, you pushed Sylus away with blushing cheeks, knowing your panties were ruined and that he could smell that. It was such an unexpected turn on. Sylus didn’t look at all upset at being pushed away save for the tiniest frown as his eyes danced over your face.

“Down boy…” You laughed lightly. “You go sit over there for thirty seconds. I get to have a head start since you decided to hide from me. You better not hold back. I have my safeword: Pomegranate.”

You swore you saw Sylus’s dilate more than they ever have before at your quiet words. It was so embarrassing at first, having open and honest conversations over something like sex, but Sylus always stressed the importance of it and now it made things like what you were about to do utterly thrilling knowing you’re safe with him.

You’ve never seen Sylus drop onto a couch so quickly, his eyes burning holes into you. The red gaze never once left your direction and followed you as you neared the doorway to the hallway. You looked over your shoulder at him, kicking off your boots one by one.

“Start counting… Now!” With a final shout you broke into a sprint, heart already racing and giggles flying from you without your say.

During your run, you started discarding things. First it was your holsters for your pistols. Then your socks. Your pants and shirt took the longest, but as you let your ruined panties hit the bare floor, you felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and quickly ran off again, now only left in your bra.

You slid into the long hallway that would eventually lead to his bedroom and felt that sensation again- that you were being watched by a predator. You didn’t even make it halfway down the hall before a heavy mass was shoving you into a wall chest first. A hand landed above your head and there your dark red panties were twisted in his grip. A long drag of Sylus’s tongue up the back of your neck and the rough pressing of his hips into your ass had you gasping out his name, reaching back with one arm to bury your hand in his silver hair.

“I caught you.” Came his low growl.

An irreverent hand slipped between your legs to drag through your dripping folds. He pauses to circle two fingers into your swollen clit for several moments. Pressing yourself back against his cock, you didn’t hold back your noises as he drew them from you.

“My pretty girl… so ready for me… You put so much effort into trying to drive me wild, huh? You want me to breed your pretty pussy so badly, kitten?”

The filth that came from his lips was just what you wanted as you forced him back a step with a harsh elbow, caught by his hand wrapped in your panties of course. Spinning, you dragged him up against you by the waistband of his pants.

“Why are these still on?” You grumbled before his lips crashed into yours in a wild flurry of kisses that was an obscene connection of tongue, lips, and panting breaths.

You only have a brief second to latch onto his shoulders as he drags your legs up around his waist. He only walks you both a small distance before he settles you on a table just meant to display some of his “shiny things” as you call them. Items of exorbitant value that he likes because of one reason or another. You try to be careful to not knock anything over, almost mentioning it to him to be careful, but he was kneeling between your legs.

You were given no warning as his lips closed over your clit for him to suck on and felt two fingers spread your folds to expose your aching hole clenching around nothing. Sylus groaned into your heat, pulling back only briefly to drown you in praise.

“You taste so good- I can’t get enough.”

You felt the cold tingling sensation of his evol as it wrapped around one of your calves to drag it over his shoulder as he buried his face into you once more. He slipped two fingers into you instead of starting with one like he usually did and it sent your back arching and snapping a hand down to his hair.

“Fuck!” You whined out, feeling his fingers slowly thrust into you at an easy pace. It was when he pulled lightly on your clit with his teeth and teased his tongue along the hood of your clit that made your arm snap out across the table. You were desperate for something to hold onto, but instead you sent a gorgeous piece of kintsugi flying to the ground, shattering immediately on impact.

The sharp sound made you jump, apologies starting to tumble off your kiss-swollen lips, but Sylus didn’t so much as shift from his position of worship between your legs. He only curled his fingers up to rub that delectable spongy spot in you that made you see stars and felt his grin when you sobbed out his name. It was right there, that delicious edge promising a most wondrous fall that had you bucking your hips into his mouth.

“Sylus! Please! S-so close. Wanna cum…” You cried.

Part of you knew he was going to pull away, but it still didn’t stop your despairing gasps that melted into frustrated growling and huffs.

Sylus rising from between your legs was a sight you’ll never tire of as his tongue worked over his fingers to collect every drop of your essence. Your slick covered the lower half of his face and that only made the denial of your orgasm all the more painful. The way he was watching you, you knew he was giving you a moment to put a stop to things if you truly wanted. Shaking your head, you sat up just so you could tear open his buttoned shirt. You glared at him when he only gave you an amused quirk of his eyebrow.

“Such a hissy kitten… You should know by now that you’re not allowed to cum tonight unless my cock is buried in you and filling you with my seed.”

Your glare became more of a pout at his purred words, a fresh wave of need hitting you like a freight train. Gods you wanted that so badly. You needed that.

“Then stop talking and take me to bed, or do you not want me to have your baby.” As you spoke you wrapped your legs around him to pull his hips into you and felt his throbbing bulge get soaked with your dripping need.

Sylus’s groan made your toes curl before he was sweeping you up in his arms and stumbling towards his room even as you desperately ground your pussy against his confined cock. His fingers sinking into the flesh of your ass almost felt sharp when he finally kicked his bedroom door in. He was too focused on biting bruises into your neck to even spare a moment of his attention to the fact that he kicked his poor door hard enough to break off one of the hinges.

When Sylus finally threw you down onto his bed you looked up at him with a cheeky smile, rolling over onto your stomach and raising your hips with a little wiggle. It earned you a hard slap as Sylus spanked you while getting rid of what remained of his shirt and his soiled pants. You let out a sharp yelp that eased into a whiny moan as heat radiated from where his palm landed on your ass.

The coolness of his evol was on your skin again as your bra was tugged free and a pillow being moved to support your hips. Then it concentrated on your wrists as your arms were pulled taut in front of you, pinned.

“Is this okay, kitten?” Sylus’s voice was a comforting roughness that always left you putty in his hands. You started to nod before verbally responding instead.

“H..haah… yes. I need you inside, Sy… I need it so badly.”

You wanted to push back into him when you felt his cock throb against you. You were still so high strung from your denied orgasm, the cusp just lingering beyond your reach. Couple that with how horny you’ve been practically all week, having waited for this day in particular, you were at your wits end.

While discussion of kids has floated around, you two haven’t tried to exactly plan for any of it. If it happens, it happens was the mentality you both were okay with, but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t try to tip the odds in your favor. It most certainly wasn’t because one of your coworkers on maternity recently stopped by with her new baby and something gripped at you so desperately you’ve been thinking about it non-stop since.

“Don’t worry Sweetie, I’ll take care of you.” Sylus’s words were an oath and you knew he’d deliver.

One of his hands massaged the cheek he slapped moments ago while his other guided him to your dripping heat only for him to sink in right to the hilt immediately. Normally it took a little time for you to relax properly. His breathless laughter was at your neck as he leaned over you, brushing your hair away so he could trail kisses along your spine.

“You really weren’t kidding… you’ve never taken me so eagerly before, baby.”

You sobbed out in utter bliss as his cock filled out every inch of you just as you’ve been needing, but even this felt like it needed more and he was already huge to begin with! His little bits of teasing didn’t even get a real response from you beyond you trying to bounce yourself against his hips.

Sylus didn’t need to be told twice to get moving, working both of you up to a brutal pace that had your entire being singing with pleasure. His cock hit you in all the right ways, reaching deep enough to tease your empty womb. Your evol-bound hands twisted into the bedding as each noise was forced from your lungs.

“More… Feels so good Sy… Want more…” You babbled, unable to see the slight emergence of black scales along his skin.

He’s never had a lapse of control over his form since long before he even jumped to this time from the Deepspace tunnel, but you right now- the way you cried for him, the scent of your fertile womb at its peak, knowing you’ve been struck by a wave of baby fever from a coworker… It made this beastly side of him rear its ugly head. The need to pin you down with his teeth and tail, to claim you as his mate properly with a vicious bite, to fill you completely and knot you to make sure his seed catches. Oh, you ruined him in all the best ways.

He knew his teeth were already sharper with how his jaw ached to clamp down on your neck and uncontrollable drool pooled in his mouth. His nails wanted to become familiar claws, but he refused to lose the sensation of feeling your skin with the sensitivity fingers offered. Your pleading for more was going to be his undoing. He could already feel a knot forming at the base of his cock and from the way you suddenly bit into the bedding with a sob, the rest of it changed too. Firm ridges and all.

“Oh gods… yessss! Sylus!” You were so lost in your pleasure you hardly paid attention to the differences other than it felt so good. Feeling drool hit your shoulder, you instinctively dropped your head the opposite way.

“Bite me.” You commanded between tearful mewls. “I’m so close-”

The noise Sylus made definitely sounded more beastial than man, but where he worried you might get scared, you just cried his name again, begging him to cum in you as you hit your peak. Sylus was growling when he slammed his hips into you, bullying his knot into your tight hole just as he clamped his teeth down on the junction between your neck and shoulder.

You were crying, overwhelmed completely between the pain and pleasure. The way he rolled his hips with every steady pulse as he filled you dragged you through the remnants of your orgasm. Something deep inside you was immensely satisfied, feeling so full of your lover.

You vaguely heard Sylus swear and your neck ache, but everything was fading out fast with sweet sleep dragged you under with a siren’s song.

“Love you… Sylus…” You mumbled before drifting off fully.

—

When you woke up your entire body was sore, but your pussy ached the most. You could smell Sylus on your pillow and hummed in contentment while stretching out as a lazy cat would. You nearly drifted back to sleep when tender fingers brushed your hair from your face and a low voice called your name.

You blearily pried one eye open, barely peeking out from your blanket you had pulled up right under your chin. Red eyes filled your vision and a tender hand crept past your blanket defenses to cup your chin.

“Hey Sweetie… Are you alright?” Sylus looked so concerned, his hair a wild mess as if he’d been running his hands through it constantly.

“Mhm… It was amazing.” You started to push the blankets down to reach out for him when you realized he already had you in a fresh set of one of your favorite jammies.

“Why aren’t you cuddling me?” You pouted.

“You, my dearest, are a menace.” He drawled out slowly, a visible relief melting into his body and eyes before he dragged a hand through his hair. You narrowed your eyes slightly.

“Were you worried about me?” You questioned, starting to sit up before he shook his head and crawled into bed with you. He dragged you on top of him like you usually preferred and he started playing with a bit of your hair.

“I lost myself a little.” He admitted quietly, meeting your eyes with genuine remorse. “I hurt you because I wasn’t-” “Did I say pomegranate?” You interrupted him, tilting your head slightly.

“No, but-”

“But nothing. I didn’t say it. I wanted all of you. Even the nonhuman-y bits. Those are starting to become my favorite.” You grinned, cheeks going the slightest bit red as the memories started coming back.

“I trust you. You trust me, right?” You reached to run a finger along his upper lip.

“I do.” He responded without hesitation. “I just… losing any level of control for me is-”

“You don’t have to explain. I know.” Your finger traced up his nose and along his brow. “You’re Sylus. My Sylus. And I’ll always love every part of you- good, bad, and wild.” You sat up slightly on his lap, dancing two fingers up his chest while humming. “And if you ever decide you want me to see all of you, I’ll savor every bit of it. Because it’s you.”

Sylus snatched your hand in his, lacing your fingers together with a quiet laugh, his eyes shining with love and face just the slightest bit red. He dragged your hands close so he could kiss the back of yours.

“I love you.” He breathed your name with reverence along with his declaration of love. It’s hardly the first time you’ve heard him like this, but it still made your heart skip a beat. You snuggled into his chest, letting your hands rest together completely entwined.

“I love you too.”

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace sylus #love and deepspace sylus smut #sylus #sylus x reader #sylus x you #romance #established relationship #qin che #sylus love and deepspace #lnds sylus #sylus x fem reader #dragon sylus #sylus birthday

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phantomrose96 · 1 year ago

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The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

#chrissy speaks

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headspace-hotel · 3 months ago

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Things I would want to study in grad school if I had infinite energy and wasn't disabled by my disability, #2018529347248392: I was reading a paper about the role of fungal spores in human illness (esp. asthma) and noticed that the genera of fungi most commonly implicated were also some of the most common pathogens of plant crops and horticultural plants.

In my horticulture class, I am learning a lot about disease in crops, and how monoculture makes crop systems susceptible to disease. Under a monoculture based crop system, some of the most productive agricultural lands are places that receive little natural rainfall. Since moisture allows fungus and other pathogens to grow, it is cheaper to grow crops in a dry region and irrigate them artificially rather than to grow crops in a wet region where rain provides what the crops need, because in a monoculture, there is no diversity and a pathogen that is extremely infectious to one plant will be extremely infectious to every plant in the entire field, creating the worlds most explosive superspreader event.

But even beyond the monoculture crop fields, there is alarming sameness in the intentionally grown plant life of the world---nursery flowers and trees are often clonally propagated and picked out from a few species that are popular...and lawns, the lawns! vast oceans of monoculture grass!

It reminded me of another paper describing how in cities, the diversity of fungal spores is much lower than in the country.

Could plant sameness be affecting our health by affecting the variety of fungus that exists in the ecosystem?

If so...how? Could over-exposure to pathogenic fungi of plant monocultures cause allergic sensitization? Or could the absence of the other fungi associated with more complete plant ecosystems, also affect human health?

#plants #ecosystems #random

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isuggestplural · 4 months ago

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Yes.

Endogenic systems exist, and they only differ in the means by which they occur from traumagenic ones.

Compartmentalization and dissociation are incredibly common things to do as a response to trauma, which are how systems happen to come to be. This means that anyone good enough at the two (which can be practiced) can, alone or with help, form system members - headmates, tulpas, anything you want to call them - without experiencing trauma.

Again, the only thing that differs are the means by which plurality is achieved, and in some cases (but for any way to get there) the intentionality of doing so.

Daryl Talks Games mentions tulpas in the "What Artificial Romance Does To People" video (which, be warned, does reference Harry Potter, which made us bounce off it. We were shown by a friend the following) and quotes researchers saying:

"The impact of trauma and the resulting function-imparing symptoms are what make Dissociative Identity Disorder a disorder, not the plurality itself."

In short? Yes, you can be plural.

#plurality #asks (plural)#endogenic system #traumagenic system

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jonnywaistcoat · 1 year ago

Note

What’s your opinion on the contrast between “silly” and “serious” spaces? Do you think people can have very serious interpretations about a genuine piece of media and also be goofy about it? I’m asking this particularly because I’ve seen people in the Magnus podcast fandoms fight about people “misinterpreting” characters you, Alex, and the many other authors have written. Are you okay with the blorbofication or do you really wish the media you’ve written would be “taken seriously” 100% of the time?

And follow up question, what do you think about the whole “it’s up to the reader (or in some cases, listener) to make their own conclusions and interpretations and that does not make them wrong”, versus the “it was written this way because the author intended it this way, and we should respect that” argument?

This is a question I've given a lot of thought over the years, to the point where I don't know how much I can respond without it becoming a literal essay. But I'll try.

My main principle for this stuff boils roughly down to: "The only incorrect way to respond to art is to try and police the responses of others." Art is an intensely subjective, personal thing, and I think a lot of online spaces that engage with media are somewhat antithetical to what is, to me, a key part of it, which is sitting alone with your response to a story, a character, a scene or an image and allowing yourself to explore it's effect on you. To feel your feelings and think about them in relation to the text.

Now, this is not to say that jokes and goofiness about a piece of art aren't fucking great. I love to watch The Thing and drink in the vibes or arctic desolation and paranoia, or think about the picture it paints of masculinity as a sublimely lonely thing where the most terrible threat is that of an imposed, alien intimacy. And that actually makes me laugh even more the jokey shitpost "Do you think the guys in The Thing ever explored each other's bodies? Yeah but watch out". Silly and serious don't have to be in opposition, and I often find the best jokes about a piece of media come from those who have really engaged with it.

And in terms of interpreting characters? Interpreting and responding to fictional characters is one of the key functions of stories. They're not real people, there is no objective truth to who they are or what they do or why they do it. They are artificial constructs and the life they are given is given by you, the reader/listener/viewer, etc. Your interpetation of them can't be wrong, because your interpretation of them is all that there is, they have no existence outside of that.

And obviously your interpretation will be different to other people's, because your brain, your life, your associations - the building blocks from which the voices you hear on a podcast become realised people in your mind - are entirely your own. Thus you cannot say anyone else's is wrong. You can say "That's not how it came across to me" or "I have a very different reading of that character", but that's it. I suppose if someone is fundamentally missing something (like saying "x character would never use violence" when x character strangles a man to death in chapter 4) you could say "I think that's a significant misreading of the text", but that's only to be reserved for if you have the evidence to back it up and are feeling really savage.

I think this is one of the things that saddens me a bit about some aspects of fandom culture - it has a tendency to police or standardise responses or interpretations, turning them from personal experiences to be explored into public takes to be argued over. It also has the occasional moralistic strain, and if there's one thing I wish I could carve in stone on every fan space it's that Your Responses to a Piece of Art Carry No Intrinsic Moral Weight.

As for authorial intention, that's a simpler one: who gives a shit? Even the author doesn't know their own intentions half the time. There is intentionality there, of course, but often it's a chaotic and shifting mix of theme and story and character which rarely sticks in the mind in the exact form it had during writing. If you ask me what my intention was in a scene from five years ago, I'll give you an answer, but it will be my own current interpretation of a half-remembered thing, altered and warped by my own changing relationship to the work and five years of consideration and change within myself. Or I might not remember at all and just have a guess. And I'm a best case scenario because I'm still alive. Thinking about a writers possible or stated intentions is interesting and can often lead to some compelling discussion or examination, but to try and hold it up as any sort of "truth" is, to my mind, deeply misguided.

Authorial statements can provide interesting context to a work, or suggest possible readings, but they have no actual transformative effect on the text. If an author says of a book that they always imagined y character being black, despite it never being mentioned in the text, that's interesting - what happens if we read that character as black? How does it change our responses to the that character actions and position? How does it affect the wider themes and story? It doesn't, however, actually make y character black because in the text itself their race remains nonspecific. The author lost the ability to make that change the moment it was published. It's not solely theirs anymore.

So yeah, that was a fuckin essay. In conclusion, serious and silly are both good, but serious does not mean yelling at other people about "misinterpretations", it means sitting with your personal explorations of a piece of art. All interpretations are valid unless they've legitimately missed a major part of the text (and even then they're still valid interpretations of whatever incomplete or odd version of the text exists inside that person's brain). Authorial intent is interesting to think about but ultimately unknowable, untrustworthy and certainly not a source of truth. Phew.

Oh, and blorbofication is fine, though it does to my mind sometimes pair with a certain shallowness to one's exploration of the work in question.

#Big thoughts #Big rambles #These are my current thoughts at least #They will likely change #As all things do

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jesuistrestriste · 1 month ago

Note

https://www.tumblr.com/jesuistrestriste/785761202958680064/i-sent-in-the-thing-about-interchangeable-dicks

what about scissoring with the ken doll mound hmmmmmmm

cw (18+) : switch (sub-leaning) android!art, switch (dom-leaning) afab!reader, skin-to-skin humping, art has ken doll anatomy down there, “scissoring” with robo art

“like this?” he shudders, shaking on the elbows that keep his upper half propped up opposite you, “is this right?”

you tip your head back when he shifts, his left leg on top of your right one and his right one under your left one—slotting your bodies together perfectly so that your naked arousals finally meet and press, a moan spilling from your wet lips.

“god, y-yeah.. that’s good, just hold that for a second.. let me try to—“

you grip one of his calves, nails digging into his artificial flesh as you attempt to get even closer. for a moment, you almost worry about breaking the skin there and causing his cobalt blood to seep out from the crescent-shaped marks that would surely be left behind, but you’re far too blissed-out to remain concerned with that for long.. and anyway, he can’t feel pain.

he does feel your grip tighten, though. he sucks in a quick breath of air at the pressure before his hips jump and cause his mound to smush further against your own. the warmth of his skin is crushing, all-consuming, and you feel his silicone-like anatomy become slick with your wetness. the vacant port that can be used to attach optional appendages at the very top of his pubic region bumps your swollen clit repeatedly. it stings pleasantly, like the throb of a fever, and sends a burning ache through you that you’ve never quite felt before; it’s like you’re being kissed all over from the inside-out.

“ohh—!” he whines involuntarily, his eyes fluttering. his hands curl in the sheets as he begins to realize what he’s supposed to do. each roll of his pelvis against yours elicits lewd, squelching noises from where you two connect, the friction beginning to quickly build a tidal wave of pleasure in your gut. you tense up. your back arches. you let him service you.

he can handle it, you’re sure of that. it’s what he was made for.

“is this how it works? i’m—haah—supposed to move like this, right? i—“ art swallows around a whimper when his body reflexively curls inward and then relaxes with the mounting heat in his systems. the words die on his lolling tongue. he’s ‘orgasmed’ before, many times now that he’s figured out how to work his accidentally (and intentionally) engineered erogenous zones with you, but this one feels.. different. there’s something primal about the sudden instinct he has to rut against your cunt like he’s nothing more than a depraved animal—when in reality, he’s anything but. he knows he shouldn’t be able to perform this sort of intimate act with you and get anything from it, it’s not really a part of his programming to receive, but oh wow.. he’s never felt so happy about the prospect of his imminent deviation..

the LED ring on his temple flicks from blue to red.

you nod, releasing your grasp on his limb to mimic his actions and tug at the bedding underneath your sticky body. in the midst of your panting, you get a good look at the android in front of you. his eyes squeezed shut, and his lips parted deliriously, and his muscly abdomen convulsing, and his thighs beginning to quake against yours. how could a being made from metal and plastic and polymer look so human in the throes of ecstasy? it makes your toes curl while you watch him frantically chase his climax. you wonder if he even knows how amazing he is.

“fuck,” you gasp, the coil in your stomach pulling taut like a stretched rubber band, about to snap and spill over, “fuck, fuck, fuck—don’t stop, don’t stop, i’m going to come..!”

your head is spinning like you’re tipsy. you see art’s face crumple with what you can only assume is mutual agony. he rubs himself against you quicker, sloppier, losing his rhythm in record-time as he feels the metal ring of his empty port, and the sensitive hill housing it, swirl with sensation.

more, more, more, almost, almost, almost..!

something about those warning words coming from your mouth always send art into a spiral. he mewls at first, like he’s in pain, and then he’s crying out desperately; it trails off into something staticky and unlike him near the end—no longer indicative of the reserved, calm, kind robot you got to know, him now dissolving into something borderline pornographic and crude. you want to stick your fingers in his mouth and play with his false spit. you want to watch the way his eyes roll back as you fiddle with the back of his throat, the absence of a gag reflex making it easy to feel it tighten around your digits. he’d love that. maybe next time. right now, you’re about to tip into something dangerously close to death.

“i’m so close,” he beats you to the punch with a sharp and urgent whine, pulling out a phrase he learned from you, a signal to declare his descent into the welcoming bath of release, “i’m close, can i come yet?”

it’s easy to say yes, easy to nod and groan and whimper along with him. you’re certain that you will not be a mere second behind him.

“yes—come with me, come for me, i don’t care, i just want to feel you let go,” you seize up, teetering, your frame locking and nearly vibrating, “i’m right here with you—“

his right hand flies up; he groans gutturally as he searches blindly for something that takes a moment to articulate. his cognitive systems are short-circuiting. they usually do when he’s a hair’s breadth away from it all.

“hold my hand? please? hold my—m-my—ha-hand, please—“

your fingers are interlocking with his instantly, and he squeezes like he’s being pulled apart. he humps you like a rabbit. it’s incapacitating.

“shit!” you squeal.

“aaagh!” he keens, “put your finger in my—“

he doesn’t even have to finish the sentence before your free index finger is plunging into the port and pressing into an exposed bit of wiring hidden inside. the metal is scorching, it almost sizzles against your skin, but you hardly perceive it.

and that’s all it takes, truly.

he breaks.

his entire lower body bears down against your own as his electronic insides fire overwhelmingly with an orgasm that is almost powerful enough to forcefully shut him down. he lets out a long, wet, jagged wail that morphs into a sob and a yelp when he feels your fluids squirt over him, and it only fuels his rapture.

your own finish syncs with his, tethered by his aggressive movements, your bundle of nerves being viciously rubbed up and down. you feel yourself pulse and contract with every thrum of it. the synthetic skin of the hand of his that’s holding yours begins to deactivate from how tightly he clutches you there, and you watch through your low lashes as pretty, white chassis is revealed. you love when that happens because it really just means he’s feeling too good to stop it.

“i’m coming!”

“me too—“

“don’t fucking stop..!”

“everything’s happening, i feel so—i can’t, i can’t, i can’t—“

you both writhe against one another until the nice feelings border on painful from overstimulation. your digit slides out of his opening and lazily drags over his spent mound, which makes him twitch and whimper. the sound of your bodies collapsing back down into the mattress, accompanied by the dual, greedy intake of oxygen, signifies that the satisfaction is shared. your hands slip apart, but it’s okay because you’re both still intensely aware of the others’ presence. you need each other right now, that’s how it always is after sex.

his white fingertips—synth-skin still deactivated—play absentmindedly with yours. he seeks out your comfort; a shiver runs down your spine.

“i think i came really hard,” he breaks the verbal silence, his voice barely above an exhausted whisper, “did it look like i did?”

art always wants some confirmation after you two get physical that you liked what you saw. he prides himself on being nice for you to look at, and loves that his appearance helps you get off.

how could it not when he always looks so gorgeously indecent?

you laugh breathlessly.

“yeah.. looked like you did. did it look like i did?”

a contemplative hum leaves his heaving chest. a blonde ringlet of hair clings to his flushed face.

“i.. i’m sorry, i think i was too—.. i think my eyes were closed too tight.. i wanted to see you, but everything just went dark and..” he bites at his bottom lip.

the sound of his internal fans going makes you laugh again. you brush your nails against his wrist.

“i’m just teasing, it’s okay.”

“.. okay.”

a long beat of quiet passes, but there’s not even an ounce of unease between you.

“how do you feel?” you murmur.

“good, yeah. really good.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

another beat. he gently squeezes your fingers in his, sucking in a soft gasp.

“i think i might need to reboot.”

a third, affectionate burst of laughter is all that he hears before his eyes close peacefully, letting him melt into the afterglow. you know he’ll be back online the moment you try to slip out of bed.

that’s just how he is.

and he’s perfect.

tags : @voidsuites @asheepinfrance @fawnnpaws @artstennisracket @andyrambles @imperishablereverie @ghostgirl-22 @lexiiscorect @cha11engers @patricksbf @newrochellechallenger2019 @pittsick @blastzachilles @oncefaist @tacobacoyeet @lacelottie

#android!art #been a long time coming #finally.#it's done.#i realize now that when i posted a little bit earlier about writing this i called it dry humping #theres nothing dry about this #wet and sticky and dripping #yeah #sage’s asks #art donaldson smut #art donaldson x reader #art donaldson x you #art donaldson fic #challengers smut #🌸 - ask prompts #🩷 - thirsts

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